NASA closes the call of small payloads to study the surface of the moon

In recent years, satellites have become smaller, to CubeSats and even even smaller spacecraft. The rockets also followed, with a much smaller booster rise for smaller satellites.

This miniaturization revolution has not yet touched the landers and robotic rovers. This is expected to change soon, driven in part by a request from NASA for relatively inexpensive, small-scale instruments and experiments that could be sent to the lunar surface in the early 2020s to conduct scientific research on the moon. The proposals for this program Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads were to reach the space agency last Monday.

The solicitation of NASA imposes strict limits on the size of these missions (less than 15 kg in mass). Indeed, they will be delivered on the lunar surface by various commercial suppliers (and, for the moment, unspecified). This restriction has in turn led the private sector to come up with inventive ideas.

NASA plans to deliver eight to twelve awards under this program in the spring of 2019 and, for the most part, it will likely be instruments that will land on the surface and stay in one place. However, a company, Lunar Outpost, is developing a miniature rover that meets these mass requirements. In an interview with Ars, the company's executives outlined their plans for a "Lunar Prospector" rover. Lunar Outpost envisions swarms of about 20 rovers crawling on the surface of the moon in search of ice, precious metals and other resources.

Build quickly

"The underlying idea is that if we want to set up an outpost on the moon, we must first know what resources are available there," said Justin Cyrus, president and chief executive officer of the small business based in Denver, Colorado. "This rover technology was the one we had identified and really needed to be developed first."

Each of the rovers weighs 10 kg, of which about half is devoted to scientific loads. They are approximately 45 cm long and 40 cm high. The rovers are designed to be self-contained, with an embedded lidar system to create maps of Moon surface features and sensors to allow rovers to navigate through permanently obscured craters where scientists predict the presence of ice in the surface or nearby. They will come with a drill capable of penetrating 16 cm into the lunar regolith, said Cyrus.

Formed in 2017, Lunar Outpost has created for the first time a drawing for the prospector rover in June of this year. A few months later, he has already started testing a prototype as part of a regolith simulation at the Colorado School of Mines, climbing slopes as steep as 30 degrees. "We are focused on fast design, fast iteration and fast construction," said Cyrus. "And if this construction fails, it's good, we just have to learn from this failure."

Lunar Outpost was founded with angel investment and since then it has not sought to raise additional funds, Cyrus said. After working for the government and the industry, he decided, along with other company officials, to create the company. He had become frustrated with the relative slowness of development and innovation.

The company has announced that it could announce its first mission to the Moon by the middle of next year, but that will likely depend on NASA's rewards as part of the lunar payload program.

Lunar Outpost Registration Image